Atlas, Puces de Vanves, Paris is a color woodcut created in 2011 by American printmaker Linda Lee Boyd. It is pencil signed, titled, dated and editioned 3/16. Atlas, Puces de Vanves, Paris was printed by the artist on ivory Rives Lightweight wove paper and the image measures 32 x 17 inches. This color woodcut is illustrated on page 144 of California Society of Printmakers: One Hundred Years 1913-2013 and on page 292 in The International Block Print Renaissance Then & Now: Block Prints in Wichita, Kansas, A Centennial Celebration —1922-2022.
Atlas, Puces de Vanves, Paris tells many stories. One is that of the successful hunt as a man walks away with his newly acquired treasure from the Marche Puces de Vanves, a flea market in the center of Paris. Another is a tip of the hat to the fable of the gods, as the man shoulders the weight of his atlas as the god Atlas bore the weight of the heavens. Boyd wrote about her process: “Stories transform realities. When I approach my art, I see the potential of a transformation occurring before me. By careful attention to the original photos, the vision of the drawing, the texture of woodcut, and the final print, I engage in a process of transformation. My task as an artist is to discern the particularities of the characters who will undergo this process of transformation. In the end I have been invited into my own process of transformation. Those who look closely at my work open themselves to a similar experience.”
Linda Lee Boyd, painter, printmaker and teacher, was born on 11 November 1949 in Petaluma, California. She received her B.A. degree in religious studies from the University of California at Berkeley and her M.F.A. degree with high distinction in printmaking from the California College of the Arts, Oakland. Boyd also studied printmaking at San Francisco State University with Roy Ragle.
Boyd is a board member of the Emeryville Celebration of the Arts, which produces the annual juried Emeryville Art Exhibition, and was on the board of the California Society of Printmakers for many years. She has taught relief printmaking at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco and has her own graphic design business.
She has exhibited her prints throughout the San Francisco Bay Area as well as numerous printmaking exhibitions including the Fourth Annual Hand Pulled Prints: The Current Practice in Printmaking, International Print Center New York, 2018, and Stand Out Prints 2018 International Juried Exhibition, Highpoint Center for Printmaking, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Linda Lee Boyd is featured in The International Block Print Renaissance
Then & Now: Block Prints in Wichita, Kansas, A Centennial Celebration
—1922-2022 by Barbara J. Thompson. Her woodcuts are in the collections of the
Janet Turner Print Museum, University of California Chico; the Fine Arts
Museums of San Francisco, California; and the Wichita Art Museum, Kansas.
